It's a new era for personal robotics. Meet Luna, the fully-programmable robot companion platform that will ship this year. As a platform, RoboDynamics -- a Santa Monica-based company previously grounded in telepresence -- is trying to position Luna as the 5-foot tall "beige box" of modern robotics. She comes with her own one-click Luna App Store, eight "Luna Expansion Ports" (think 12/5 volt USB for robots), and Luna CloudNet where third-parties can sell additional functionality like face recognition to app developers. The robot ships with a number of personality packs and features an 8-inch touchscreen, two cameras, wireless connectivity, a three-mic array, and a variety of sensors. Oh, and she's portable. Remember, Luna's not a prototype, but a real working robot that you can actually take home for the price of an entry-level fully-loaded laptop.

Update: While $1,000 is the ultimate target price, the initial batch of limited edition Luna robots will ship in Q4 for $3,000. General availability will begin in the second half of 2012 with final pricing coming later this year.

Luna is world's first personal robot by RoboDynamics that incorporates design, open standards and infinite expandability into an affordable personal robot ready for mainstream adoption.

SANTA MONICA, California - May 11, 2011 - RoboDynamics today announced the introduction of Luna, world's first personal robot designed for mainstream consumer adoption. Dubbed "the iPad of robots" by technology journalists, Luna is the first robot to feature a native App Store, standard PC architecture, an open Linux based operating system, touchscreen display, WiFi, and multiple tactically located standard USB based expansion ports for infinite expandability.

"Luna is a radical rethinking of personal robots and we believe a beautifully designed, human sized, open, and affordable personal robot will spark a flurry of innovations similar to what we've already seen in parallel industries such as PCs and Mobiles" said Fred Nikgohar, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of RoboDynamics. "For the price of a laptop we've made available for the first time a human-sized robot with incredibly elegant design, infinite expandability, and a native App Store. Our objective is to aggressively remove cost and complexity thereby facilitating widespread consumer adoption while simultaneously providing a unique ground floor opportunity for the developer community to bring innovative ideas to a financially viable robotics ecosystem."

Pricing and Availability
One thousand limited edition Luna personal robots will begin shipping in 4th Quarter 2011 on a first come first serve basis with corresponding serial numbers for $3,000. General availability of Luna will begin in the second half of 2012 and pricing will be announced later this year.
The first 25 of the limited edition Luna personal robots will be auctioned off in the coming weeks and proceeds will benefit the RoboDynamics Educational Outreach Program where we will give away Luna robots to qualified students and university researchers.

To participate in the auction for the first 25 Luna personal robots or to get notified when the remaining units are available for pre-order, please visit the RoboDynamics website at http://robodynamics.com